


Take My Breath Away

by gamerfic



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Breathplay, Character Study, Community: kink_bingo, Episode Related, F/M, Masturbation, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-14
Updated: 2010-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/pseuds/gamerfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation."  Takes place during and immediately after the season 3 episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose."  Written for the "breathplay" square for Kink Bingo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take My Breath Away

"You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation."

In a way it's almost a relief to know that even after years spent as the laughingstock of the FBI, Fox Mulder can still be embarrassed. He tries to play it off as nothing. "Why are you telling me that?" he asks Bruckman.

"Look, forget I mentioned it. It's none of my business." Bruckman is actually smirking now. Scully is watching the road as she drives, her face turned away from him, so he can't see how she reacts. But even if she ends up regarding Clyde Bruckman's prediction with her usual skepticism (and he hopes against hope that she does), Mulder understands, and that's enough.

When it's all over, when the killer is dead and so is Bruckman and they've left Minneapolis with Scully's ridiculous new little dog, Mulder writes his report and thinks about what he's learned. It's true that Bruckman's ability, while limited in scope, hit more often than it missed - even Scully might admit as much. But this time around, Mulder finds himself making excuses, wanting for once in his life not to believe. He knows it's ridiculous to argue for the existence of UFOs and alien abductions and secret human cloning projects and giant man-eating humanoid flukeworms in the sewers until he's blue in the face, then suddenly get all prudishly skeptical about psychics the second that one of them predicts something less-than-cheerful about his own future. He just can't help himself this time, any more than he can help what turns him on.

In the end, it comes down to the pie. Bruckman said he saw Mulder's throat being slashed, his attention distracted by the banana creme pie he'd stepped in. The moment came, all right, but Mulder had been warned, so he was able to respond when he realized what was happening. He changed his own future. Why can't he do the same for the other death that Bruckman implied? And if it can be averted, doesn't Mulder owe it to himself to do everything in his power to avoid it, when there is still so much work to be done that only he can do?

So he quits. Cold turkey. Not every sort of Fox Mulder's Extra Special Private Time, of course - that's not what the warning was about, and he's spent too much money on VHS tapes over the years for that much caution to be warranted just yet. No, he's just quitting the sort where he ends up on his stomach with his face buried in a pillow, or standing in the shower and seeing how long he can go without filling his lungs. The sort where the head rush that follows the moment where he finally decides that he can't hold his breath any longer is as much a release as the inevitable conclusion of the act.

He can't really explain why it works for him - he might as well try to explain why he likes sunflower seeds, or why he still sleeps on the couch every night when he owns a perfectly good bed, or why he can never seem to change the channel when _Plan 9 From Outer Space_ is on. In this area of his life, at least, he's perfectly satisfied to allow some things to remain a mystery. But it doesn't take long for another mystery to present itself. Try as he might, through variation or through tried-and-true routine or through any number of fantasies that play themselves out on his TV screen or in his mind's eye, nothing can satisfy him quite as well as the one thing he's promised himself he won't do.

He's an Oxford-educated psychologist, and he knows the definitions of his terms as well as anyone - it's only a fetish if it interferes with your life or if you can't get off without it. Otherwise it's just a preference. And he's stubborn enough to insist to himself that this thing won't get the best of him. Still, this is the longest he's gone without it in some time, and the strain is starting to show. It's in this frustrated state that he stomps into his basement office at the FBI building on a Sunday morning, wearing his torn-up New York Knicks T-shirt, drenched in sweat from a jog that did little to relieve the frustration mounting inside him.

It takes a moment for him to realize that Scully is there, her head snapping up to regard him in confusion when she hears him slam the door behind him as he enters. She clearly wasn't expecting him, because she's sitting behind his desk with both feet propped up on top of it and a file folder spread open across her thighs. She's dressed in a skirt and blouse even though it's the weekend - maybe she's come from brunch with her family, or from church - and the contrast with his own grubby clothing draws his attention to her neatly crossed ankles, the way she's slid one of her shoes partway off her foot, the run that's beginning at the heel of her nylons. She pulls her feet down off the desk and sits up straighter in his chair, which creaks loudly when she moves. A dusty beam of light tumbles through the office's small window and draws gold and copper highlights out of her hair and a subtle luminance from her skin. Back-lit, she belongs in a Renaissance painting or a stained glass window, not a shabby basement office full of stories that nobody but him believes.

Dazzled though he may be, he retains enough presence of mind to know that it would be weird and creepy to turn and run the other way without speaking. So he comes up with a quick excuse - "Just picking up a few case files on my way home. What about you?" - and makes small talk and excuses himself as quickly as politeness will allow. Later that night, lying on the couch with only the flickering of the TV and the faint blue glow of the empty fish tank illuminating the living room, he slips his hand beneath the blanket and allows the image of Scully behind the desk to enter his mind. And the tighter he clings to it the harder it becomes to draw breath, the more his lungs seize up at the thought of her, until bursts of color explode behind his closed eyelids and he sighs and shudders and lets go and rolls over onto his side, gasping for air.

It's not a fetish if you can still get off some other way. But it's also not cheating if you can't help it. He's not exactly sure how long he's known that Scully was the only one for him. And it doesn't really matter when it started. What matters now is the fact that one glance from her - suspicious, doubtful, disdainful, he doesn't care - is all it takes to take his breath away. She's opened the wrong drawer in the office too many times not to know about his fantasies - but does she know that she stars in them, too? How would knowing that make her feel? How could he even begin to ask her? It seems that he's found at least one thing he'd rather not know the truth about just yet.

Clyde Bruckman was right - there are worse ways to go, and there's no point in regretting how he feels. But there are times that Fox Mulder still wishes that in matters of the heart and of other body parts, he could be just a little more dignified.


End file.
